Walking around Flint - Bernie's HQ

The D7200 arrived last Saturday.  I've spent a lot of time in the last week going over the menu items and set up.  As with anything, over time functionality of new models either gets more complicated or more useful.  And this new camera is the same.  I needed a book to get thought it.

The basics are the same.  Nikon's use and names of internal camera functions are the same, but the numbers are very different.  For example, my D90 had 11 auto-focus points.  This one has 51.  How did I ever get by?  Both the D90 and D7200 have two auto-focus modes - but the new one is so fast.

So after a few days of shooting everything in the office - multiple times - it was time to take the D7200 on the road.  Today wasn't the best day, in fact it was cold and a bit of snow.  But I really needed to get out and do whatever I could to see the new one in action.

This past Saturday on my way to the Flint Farmer's Market, I passed the Bernie Sander's presidential HQ for Flint.  For all the wrong reasons, Flint is in the news and for a few days at least the center of the Democratic Party focus.  I've been told I don't have many pictures of Flint.  Well, this was too good to pass up.  I have more pictures from this morning's walk, but I'll start with this one.  I don't know of any in my circle of friends who are socialist - as they all have jobs.  So take this as it is, a subject photo.  Not a political endorsement.

1/250   f/11
EV 0.0
Manual Mode
ISO 200
Focal Length 55 mm

With this set of photos today, I completed my journey to the Dark Side as far as how much the camera helps me.  In the beginning as we all do I started with shooting with AUTO mode.  Let the camera do everything.  Until recently, I used APERTURE mode.  I wanted to keep the aperture consistent because most of my work finds its way to HDR merging.  Today, I cut all dependence on the modes and went MANUAL.  And somehow I got through it all.

Clearly not open for business on a Sunday morning.  To me, there is a lot going on here.  Lots and lots of lines.  Lines everywhere.  I like the blues, I like the oranges.  I like the bricks and other masonry.  

This is a single photo using Photomatix - and mostly the Surreal settings.  However in some spots, the processing left flat white areas that possibly caught your eye and that wasn't what I was going for.  So I did anther processing for the same shot except with a different setting that didn't have all the whites.  I used the second shot as my base and laid the Surreal settings on top with a 75% opacity setting.  It crushed the whites and brought out the definition in the bricks.  Worked for me.

I tried to do all the right things.  Use a tripod.  Get the right light.  Get the right focus point.  Not sure if all of that worked for me, plus the new camera, but today's shots were so sharp without any processing.  Think I'm going to like this.